1S82 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUEE. 



125 



didly afterward. The quickest way to get rid of lay- 

 ing workers is to shake the bees into a pile 10 rods 

 from the stand, returning the hive supplied with 

 unsealed brood, and a queen or queen-cell. All the 

 bees that can fly will return, but not the laying 

 workers. 



Another way: If there are many young bees that 

 would be lost by the above method, give them an 

 unsealed queen-cell, and plentj' of eggs and larvte. 



Oliver Foster. 



Mt. Vernon, Linn Co., la., Dec. 19, 1881. 



THE IPS AND DOIUNS OF THE MAN 



^VHO GOT 565 LBS. IN ONE \^EAR 



FKOM A NUCXEUS. 



ALSO SOMETHING ABOUT CELLAR AVINTERING — WIN- 

 TERING A COLONY ON IV2 LBS. OF HONEY. 



¥0U say, in Deo. No. of Gleanings, page 59V, 

 that you have no doubt that I have been 

 — ' through discouragements and troubles like 

 many of the rest. Yes, that is so. I have had many 

 ups and downs in the few years I have kept bees, 

 and I will tell you about it. I commenced bee-keep- 

 ing in 18T6, with one swarm, which I increased by 

 dividing to 3. It was a poor season here that year. 

 I put them in the cellar in November, and in Febru- 

 ary I took them out. In March we had terribly cold 

 weather, and a big snowstorm, so I lost 3 of my 3 

 colonies. In January, 1877, I ordered the A. B. J., 

 and Magazine, the first bee papers I ever read, and 

 in May, Gleanings. From this I learned a better 

 way of artificial swarming. In the fall of that year 

 I had 18 colonies in good condition for winter, and 

 they all came out of the cellar in the spring, as 

 bright as a new dollar. From these 18 colonies in 

 1878 I increased to 45, and took considerable honey. 

 I am sorry I did not weigh them in the fall and 

 spring, and keep a record of the honey; now I al- 

 ways weigh the bees when I put them in the cellar, 

 and again when I talie them out in the spring. Nov. 

 7, 1878, 1 put them in the cellar; March 23, 1879, 1 

 took them out. They were as bright and nice as the 

 spring before. They wore in the cellar 135 days. 

 One colony consumed only 4 lbs. ; 3, iVz lbs. ; 4, 5 lbs. ; 

 2, 51/2 lbs.; 14, 6 lbs.; 3, ^M lbs.; 1, 13 lbs., and the rest 



7 and 8 lbs., making an average of 6 8-9 lbs. I sold 

 some colonies, and increased them during the sum- 

 mer to 101, and had a very good crop of honey. Put 

 them in the cellar Nov. 4, 1879, and took them out 

 the latter part of March and fore part of April, 1880. 

 They were in the cellar about 148 days. One colony 

 consumed 1^2 lbs.; 4, 3U lbs.; 4, 4 lbs.; 15, 4!4 lbs.; 8, 

 5 lbs.; 14, 5'/4 lbs.; 13, 6 lbs.; 4, 6/2 lbs.; 1. 10'^ lbs.; 

 the rest, 7 and 8 lbs.; average amount consumed, 

 5 8-15 lbs. Then I had the first spring dwindling. I 

 sold some colonies, and increased to 88. I had only 

 about 600 lbs. honej% nearly all fall honey, as white 

 clover was a failure. Nov. 13, 1880, I put them in 

 the cellar, and April 16, 1881, took them out. They 

 were in the cellar 155 days. One colony consumed 5 

 lbs.; 3,6 lbs.; 2, 614 lbs.; 3, 7 lbs.; 1, 13U. lbs.; 1, 13 

 lbs.; 1, 13^2 lbs.; 1, 15 lbs.; 1, 16'/2 lbs.; the rest from 



8 to 12 lbs., averaging 9 4-5 lbs. per colony. I had 33 

 dead colonies; the remaining .55 I doubled up, so I 

 had 25 colonies in not very good condition, and 10 

 nuclei of 1 and 3 frames for queen-rearing. From 

 these 25 colonies I obtained 6037 lbs. of honey, of 

 which 3107 lbs. was extracted, and 2920 lbs. comb. 



and increased to 93 colonies. I sold some colonies, 

 and now have 83 in the cellar, and 4 colonies on sum- 

 mer stands packed in hay. 



I will report next spring how I succeeded in win- 

 tering them. So far they are all right. 



H. Newhaus. 



Burlington, Wis., Jan. 30, 1883. 



Thanks for the figures, friend X. It seems 

 to me your colony must have been a very 

 small one, that consumed only li lbs. in 148 

 days — rather a nucleus, was it not V I once 

 wintered a small colony that I should think 

 hardly consumed more than that ; but as I 

 did not weigh them, I can not say exactly. 

 I dare say, that those that used so little 

 stores came out in better health than if they 

 had used four times as much. AVhat a sav- 

 ing it would be if we knew enough to win- 

 ter a pint of bees and a queen everii time, and 

 thus save the large amounts of I'loney con- 

 sumed by a heavy colony ! With our pres- 

 ent light, we could easily make the pint into 

 a rousing colony before winter, and may be 

 get a crop of honey besides. Where is Hos- 

 mer now-a-days V 



THE SEX OF EGGS OF A QUEEN. 



SOME THOUGHTS AND FACTS FROM A FRIEND OVER 

 THE WATER. 



WN the columns of the British Bee J(mrnal, and 

 Jl also in Gleanings, I occasionally find opinions 

 advanced on the above subject, which seem 

 barely to harmonize with entomological facts; and 

 if my judgment serves me correctly, Prof. Cook, in 

 his Manual, advances the theory, that the sex of eggs 

 is determined, if not by the will of the queen-bee, at 

 least by the amount of abdominal pressure to which 

 she is subjected in depositing cgfis in different-sized 

 cells, whilst others, with a semi-claim to the appella- 

 tion of naturalist, support the idea that the will of 

 the insect in controlling the amount of sperm to 

 each, is supreme in this matter of sex. I am not, 

 however, aware that any definite conclusion has 

 been arrived at, through demonstrative evidence; 

 and a few details of observations, taken in a small 

 apiary in the center of Montrose, Scotland, during 

 last season, may assist your readers in forming an 

 opinion thereon. 



During the first days of August, four out of five 

 hives were prepared and sent to the heather above 

 Fasque — a distance of over 14 miles ; and some time 

 after their despatch, the remaining hive, which was 

 a stock hive in movable frame, from which a top 

 swarm hart been taken, was discovered to be queen- 

 less. The brood being all sealed, it was necessary to 

 obtain a square inch of worker comb filled with eggs, 

 from a hive at Ilossie Gardens, a distance of over a 

 mile. This was attached to comb with a small piece 

 of wire, and two queen-cells were speedily raised 

 thereon. After a few days, all the ova disappeared 

 from the small piece of comb; and in about a week 

 from the time of giving eggs, a number of drone- 

 cells were filled with the whitish substance common 

 to larva? at this stage. Here the thought suggested 

 itself, that the queen had been overlooked in previ- 

 ous examinations. But then, why these two queen- 

 cells? And on a still more careful scrutiny, and 

 comparison of the number of cells in previously 

 mentioned square with the larvse in drone-cells, a 



